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Pool B increased to three

The NCAA released an update to the original playoff breakdown and has come up with math that makes a little more sense: There will be three Pool B bids for 27 schools and six Pool C bids for everyone remaining, including the runners-up in the 23 conferences with automatic bids.

I won’t get too far into the details of how this happened but basically the formula was miscalculated because the football committee wasn’t told of two teams that were newly eligible for the NCAA playoffs this season.

Division III fans knew, and as usual, it was Ralph Turner who was among those trying to figure out the math and leading the way. We raised it with the NCAA a week ago and when we showed our work, we found we didn’t have the same number of eligible Pool B teams. (We also got the schools and conference involved, to press the issue.)

It’s not the first time a D3sports.com-covered sport has had a change in the Pool B/Pool C bid allocation. In fact, it happened in football in 2000.